I disagree a bit with a random event being potentially devastating. If it's a large invasion or something along those lines where you get attacked, and you don't do anything about it, then you should be at least a bit penalized for it and have it set you back a decent amount.

Otherwise if random events don't have some sort of noticeable penalty for not taking part in it, then what's the point?

Well, I guess it's a case of should random events be for flavor, or should they have serious impact? I would imagine something like a major invasion would be handled via the quest system, so you would still have to act.

The reason I would prefer not to have devastating random events is I would hate to be set back hugely or crippled by events out of my control. What if you had a random event hand you a plague that the random number generator determined killed half your units? Then you had to deal with either other players or try to complete quests with that handicap.

I'd rather be in that situation due to my losing a battle or making a dumb decision versus a chance event.

Random Events are good but should be controlled, i mean it will make the game exciting but may become seriously annoying for some. There should be a option in single player which allows random events to occur but on multilayer it can me frustrating. I mean think about it in a good RTS game random events don't just occur and if the did then game play would start to become BS after a while. Random events like natural disasters should be linked to the land the nations is in. Linking the land to the disaster makes sense. A Volcano will only make volcanic eruption in the area it is in, not just randomly anywhere. Civilizations 5 had the Gold age and I love the King scheme where you complete a set of objectives or continually complete to receive a proper bonus for the nations, not just a random bonus of 500 gold. The only reason you would receive 500 gold or something would be lets say if u carried out a raiding party or assassinated a enemy personal. All i'm saying is to link the events to the proper bonuses and negative effects.

I'm pretty sure that most if not all random events will be beneficial, or risky with high end benefit. Even then, the majority of those will probably also be story / added quest related.

Anything horrible detrimental to enjoyment of the game I would simply rule out as an option. Something like a natural disaster I could certainly see, but it would be only a smaller hindrance.

I would enjoy some weather and environmental elements causing for interesting battles, however. Maybe rain or snow could make the fog of war tighter due to lower troop visibility? Maybe a shortcut across a part of land is available because a pond is frozen? That could prove interesting.

This unpredictable/ random event idea is really cool but i think it will be perfectly replaced by side quests, of course it depends on how subtle the quests will be.. and so far i havent seen a single note about them };]

this thread is very similar to the natural disasters thread.
there i agree that random events are nice and actually become standard fare in MMO's as everyone recognised they add flavor to a game like this. but they do need to be kept sublte rather than overwhelming. small changes that give a bit of a change for a few days are good. suddenly finding your whole army has been turned into turnips by a passing evil wizard isnt so fun....funny, but not fun

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GM-ing of crops is rife yes? so why have i not yet seen a 10ft killer tomato? to me thats just lazy!

yea i would love this....its one of the reasons im looking soo foward to rift (new wow type mmo) is because there entire game is based around the randomness that can happen...just love that type of **** in my mmo's